By the end of the second day, Ruyi wasn't sure how she'd ever been so nervous. Maybe Sabina was right. Her fears were never as big as she made them out to be. And maybe the tribe's mood was trickling into her own; it was hard to be mopey when everyone else was so happy.

The next caverns they cleared went as easily as the last few. The worst wound any of them got was Rufus: a Demon King giant scorpion gored him in the belly pretty bad, but Demon Kings like him were very hard to kill. With a little antidote, some shaman magic, and an hour or two of healing, he was as good as could be.

There were scarier things deeper down, close to the gates of hell. But Drusilla never took those routes. She said she wouldn't go deep with them—what was important was protecting her tribe.

The third day, the shamans did their morning smoke rituals, spoke to spirits, and took notes of the essence flows. Titus decreed that today was to be the last day. Tomorrow, the gaps would seal back up and the spring would end. Ruyi was disappointed. It felt like they'd hardly got here! Or rather, it felt like she'd hardly started having fun.

She was complaining as much to Sabina when Livia returned from her scouting mission.

"Hot spot ahead,” Livia announced. “It's our biggest one yet! The news sent a thrill through the crowd of them. Looking good and there's just one monster. A big one—a named fiend."

Ruyi perked up. Livia had briefed her on this, but she hadn't thought they'd actually come across one! They were called named fiends because there was only one of them. The Hundred-Handed Man. The Green-Eyed Dragon. The Sphinx. All of them had been made millennia ago when the gates of hell were first opened, and those original demons took the essence of the gods full force.

“It's Cyclops,” said Livia. “Half-step deity. We've clashed with him before, nearly a decade ago. Yes, I see some of you remember. We sent him fleeing then, and we will send him fleeing now!”

“How strong is he?” said Ruyi.

“Pssh!” said Sabina. “I have fought with it before and matched it blow for blow. It is strong, yes. But not stronger than two of us. And there are twenty of us.” She grinned at Ruyi. “You were saying you wanted a challenge?”

This time Ruyi insisted on being the first one through. Out of all of them, she could take the hardest punch. “I have a thick skull!” she said proudly. No one could disagree with that.

Eagerly, they went in.

The Cyclops was so big it had to hunch over so its head didn't hit the ceiling. They wondered how it even moved around—did it have to crawl and squeeze through the tunnels? It bellowed at her as soon as she came through, and she bellowed back, a lot less loudly, but just as fiercely.

As it turned out, it didn't even hit as hard as Sabina! It punched her with one huge, slow fist glowing black at the knuckles, and though it rattled her head and chattered her teeth, hopping into the wall, she was more dazed than hurt. Maybe she was so small compared to it that it couldn't even hit her right—the fist kept going after she flew off; most of its heft went into the floor, where it sent up a cloud of smoke and dug out quite a big hole. But it only looked scary. When she slashed at its legs or opened up fountains of blood on its arms, it was the one howling and stumbling.

It was mostly just big, so it had a lot of blood flowing through it, and it took a lot of cuts to bleed it out. But when the rest of her pack joined in, they soon had the thing to the knee, and then two knees. It couldn't even run off; they brought it down and swarmed its head, bashing and scratching and blasting sheets of ice, making a frostbitten black waste of its skin, turning its veins into frozen rivers. And then, it thudded into the ground, and didn't get back up again.

She marveled at how easy it had been. It really wasn't useful being that big—at some point, you got too clunky to move properly, and little things could just dance around you. Then she looked at Darius, prodding the Cyclops' curled-up hand with his big toe, and in a rare flash of insight, an insult came to her fully formed.

Giddily, she hopped over to him. She rehearsed it twice in her head, just so she could make sure she got it right. Whenever Darius nailed her with a zinger, it was always so pithy. She kept trying to get him back, but her comebacks grew long, clunky, and awkward even as she said them, and she ended up looking like an idiot, even to herself. Not this time!

“Darius!”

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Hmm?”

“It's just like you, because it's big but it doesn't know how to use it!”

“What?”

“The cyclops,” she said. “It's just like you. You know, because it's big, but it doesn't know how to use it.” She wasn’t sure if it was just her, but it didn’t sound nearly as devastating once she said it aloud.

Darius looked at her as if she was a dog trying to open a door and failing miserably at it. “Are you... Are you trying to insult me?”

“Yes.”

“Lula,” he sighed, “you're very bad at this.”

“I am not!”

“Yes, you are. You really, really are. Leave the jibes to me. Stick to what you're good at—like… oh, I don’t know—binge drinking, and pining after people who’ll never like you back?”

He patted her on the head.

Ruyi's mouth dropped open. She tried saying something, but all that came out was spluttering. She could only watch as he sauntered away.

Later, on one of her many, many times replaying this moment—usually while drunk—she would feel humiliated, sure. But it was the head pat at the end that really got her. She wished she had the wherewithal in the moment to give him a swift kick between the legs, but her head had gone totally blank.

***

They made a feast out of the cyclops. They all ate and ate and ate until they were near bursting. They set up row upon row of racks in the center of the cavern and roasted the meat on spits as long as tent poles. She wasn't sure if it was so delicious because of the seasoning the cooks had put on it, or if it was the flesh itself, or if it was because she was having it around a little campfire, with folks she loved dearly and also Darius, telling stories of the day. Each telling of the story got a little wilder; the cyclops had four arms, not two, and it breathed streams of fire, and awesome Ruyi knocked all its teeth out with a punch. That was her story, anyway. They offered her drinks and she refused.

It became a little festival. There was much dancing, much kissing, everyone threw themselves at each other, everyone was quite drunk—not even on wine; there was something in the air. Eventually, it was too much for Ruyi. She retreated to the sagefur pens, where Dow was, and made her usual bed on his back, and murmured to him until he fell asleep. It had been a really good day.

***

Marcus nearly wept when he caught sight of the marble pillars of his manor, peeking out of the mists of Mount Olympus. Home at last!

He had spent a grueling three weeks in the south, shuttling between warlords Decimus and Reina, desperately trying to forestall a war that would swallow half the demon lands. It took much bribery and groveling—he was not above groveling when it came to the fate of the land—but at last, they'd worked out a truce so shaky that he was expecting a raven at any moment, calling him back.

The problem, they said, was land. The real problem, however, was pride and greed. But that was a problem of their natures, and there was no changing that. When two demons were hungry, heavens help anyone who came between them and eating. Heavens helped Marcus.

When he threw open the doors, soaked in the beauty of his marble staircases, his lovely Tang paintings, he felt that overpowering wash of relief that only home could bring. He wanted nothing more than to lie down and unravel. But he could not.

He'd hardly been back an hour and he was pacing in his study, waiting. He'd been dragged into the South, but the West also worried him. He'd been monitoring Octavius closely ever since he had orchestrated his backstabbing. A constellation of facts worried him. He knew Octavius's nature. He knew that the springs on Frigus and Infernus territory were unusually close this year. He knew his contact in the Infernus tribe had gone silent. He'd sent ravens to Drusila, urged heavy scouting and as much caution as she could muster. But still…

A dark flicker caught his eye. His raven, coming home. All his Sevencolor Ravens were being intercepted. It took a decoy to get this one through Infernus skies—and even then, he was a little surprised to find it returning.

"Thank Heavens!" he exclaimed. He stumbled over to his blackboards and unfurled the giant yellowed map clipped to the top. It was densely scrawled with his neat script, and pins marked the places of each of the nine tribes.

His raven knew what to do. It dipped a claw in the ink pot on his desk, glided smoothly over, and started to trace a line. It had been sent to spy on the Infernus tribe—likely unnecessary; they’d be deep in their Spring by now. But Marcus needed to know.

The claw sped from the Infernus heartlands due west… and kept going. It looped right over their Spring.

“No, no,” said Marcus. He pointed out the pin which marked the Spring. “The Spring is here.”

His raven cawed in annoyance. I know that. The line kept moving.

It crossed the Frigus border.

“No,” whispered Marcus.

Then the raven took another dip of ink. It traced up from just south of the Frigus border—that was Warlord Lucius’s territory, Ignis Avis territory.

They too had foregone their Spring. They, too, were marching north. A pincer.

Marcus had worked a web of bribes, and assurances, treaties, and proxy wars. He’d held the land together with gossamer strings… it wasn’t tenable. If this was true, something fundamental had broken.

That evening he would send out a flight of ravens. Among them was one bound for the Frigus Tribe. But they would be well underground by now. There was no warning them.

He had failed them.